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Lori Daigle and Liz Barnez

It was the spring of 1981 in Louisiana. Liz Barnez was 16 and Lori Daigle was 17. They met while playing on competing high school sports teams. When they joined the all-star softball team that summer, their friendship blossomed into something more.

At StoryCorps in Fort Collins, Colorado, Liz and Lori sat down to reflect on their teenage romance, and how they reunited nearly 30 years later.

They married in 2015 after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. That was more than 30 years after their first kiss.

Top photo: Lori Daigle and Liz Barnez at StoryCorps in Fort Collins, Colorado. Photo by Jacqueline Van Meter for StoryCorps.Middle photo: Liz Barnez and Lori Daigle in the summer of 1981. Photo courtesy of Lori Daigle.Bottom photo: Robert Herman, Lori Daigle, Liz Barnez, and Haley Daigle, from left to right, at Liz Barnez and Lori Daigle’s wedding in 2015. Photo by Kris Harmon and courtesy of Lori Daigle.

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LIZ BARNEZ (LB): So we were growing up in New Orleans. Good Catholic girls. I went to Holy Angels. You went to Dominican. And we played sports against each other. And a big group of us would go out and we’d all dance together and… I don’t know there was just an attraction.

LORI DAIGLE (LD): Yes, I remember that too. I actually remember that first kiss. We drove out to the parking lot of Lake Pontchartrain, and I remember never being so afraid and so excited in my entire life.

LB: We never talked about it with each other even. And you went off to college.

LD: Yeah, I went off to college.

LB: I stayed in New Orleans. Went to UNO. We lost touch.

LD: Mhm. I let my parents know at nineteen and that’s when um my father and mom decided that uh they didn’t want me to come back to the house. I knew what I wanted and I knew who I wanted to be, but how do I get back into my family? The answer to that was to get married… to a man and have children… and that’s what I did for 17 years.

I felt love and I felt companionship, but that feeling that I had for you—that crazy, chaotic excitement—I just didn’t feel that.

LB: Yeah.

LD: I had been divorced for two weeks, and I was just going to be single for the rest of my life… and then you and I reconnected on Facebook.

LD: And all the old memories, all the old feelings, everything just came flooding back.

LB: So 28 years later… or longer than that after the first kiss… you came out to Colorado to visit.

LD: And I just saw you and all I wanted to do was kiss you again.

LB: And that was even better. We had learned how to kiss over the years.

LD: Had a little more confidence. [both laugh]

LB: Yes! And your parents came around.

LD: My mom got to see me being happy and me…

LB: …before she passed away.

LD: Yep. And last letter she ever wrote me was I am so happy that you are finally getting to be you.